Sunday, May 27, 2012

100% Insulting Hot Dog Commercial

There's nothing funnier than a commercial narrated (and clearly written) by a woman which has the subject "Men: they are so Stupid and Weird, aren't they?"

In this one- I think it's # 467, 224 in the Dumb Men Being Dumb File- three intensely bored-looking guys are standing around a grill having a "conversation" about whether or not some Major League baseball player won the batting title in 1936 or 1938, or something (how many times do you want me to watch this crap? Close enough!) They aren't looking at each other or anything else in particular- just staring into space, as if they are just a little uncomfortable to be there, but not so uncomfortable that they are willing to sit down and spend time with Wifey and the Kids. They sure don't look like they are having anything but a really lousy, pointless, sad, Suburban-ritual afternoon which drives them to do nothing short of re-evaluating their entire lives.

Sidebar: I actually think that is what is going through the minds of these guys as they carry on their non-conversation concerning a baseball player who has been retired for seventy years: Each one is conducting personal inventory, retracing his steps to discover how he got to this moment, where he's spending a perfectly nice Memorial Day standing around someone's backyard adding greasy hot dogs to his already expanding waistband, unable to come up with anything of even the slightest bit of substance to say, compelled to needle the Next Door Neighbor With Exactly The Same Life He Has with gradeschool-level teasing. Remember that Memorial Day Weekend when you and your girlfriend threw a cooler filled with wine and cheese and took off for the coast for 72 hours of sun, surf and sex? If you can't, it's probably for the best.

Anyway, the tagline for this ad is something like "you can't understand men," and I suppose that if men were anything like the fat wax mannequins in Dad Clothes in this commercial, it would make perfect sense. What is really confusing is the "100% happy" line which follows. Do you see anyone being even 1% happy here?

4 comments:

No. What I see is the disturbed and disturbing reality behind all the ads telling men to settle for buying a Caravan and having 2.4 kids: they have to live with a trophy wife who's openly ashamed of them. Ces Marciuliano called one of them "Ted Forth."

I suppose the point, such as it is, is that if you are 99.999999% sure, then you are wrong. That backs up the assertion that "100%" angus beef is better. I don't like the commercial and I don't think it's funny, but I think that was their logic.